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In the wake of nationwide protests, Big Tech companies such as Amazon, Google, and Facebook have publicly stated their "support of the Black community." On the next Techtonic, Chris Gilliard discusses his recent Fast Company piece that explains how Big Tech companies profit from exploiting and harming the very communities they claim to support.

• HQ2. WSJ, Nov 14, called it Amazon’s Golden Fleecing: "We rarely agree with socialist Congresswoman-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but she’s right to call billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies for Amazon 'extremely concerning.' These handouts to one of the richest companies in the history of the world, with an essentially zero cost of capital, is crony capitalism at its worst.... In New York they call this a racket, and with good reason."

• The Facebook Movie Told Us What We Needed to Know About Mark Zuckerberg (NYT, Nov 18): "
'The reality of running a company of more than 10,000 people,' Mr. Zuckerberg said on Thursday, 'is that you’re not going to know everything that’s going on.' It was a baffling explanation for anyone who took him and his deputy, Sheryl Sandberg, at face value when they swore, not long ago, that they would work openly to assert more control over the platform to stop misinformation campaigns, privacy breaches and incitements to violence.
Nothing was more at variance with their promises of transparency than The Times’s revelation that the company had hired Definers Public Affairs... as part of its work for Facebook, the firm circulated tip sheets suggesting that the liberal political donor George Soros — a common figure in anti-Semitic tropes — was behind a coalition of groups criticizing Facebook under the 'Freedom from Facebook' umbrella."

• Don't forget Google! Google accused of 'trust demolition' over health app (Nov 14): "A controversial health app developed by artificial intelligence firm DeepMind will be taken over by Google, it has been revealed... [the app] was first used to send alerts in a London hospital but hit headlines for gathering data on 1.6 million patients without informing them. DeepMind now wants the app to become an AI assistant for nurses and doctors around the world."

• "'Data collected by DeepMind Health will never be connected to Google accounts or services,' the company said in a previous statement... [now] DeepMind Health will be absorbed into Google Health." (CNBC)

Algorithms are rating you in ways you have no knowledge of, or control over. Big Tech and Wall Street are joining forces for just this reason. On this Techtonic, Mark interviews Frank Pasquale, law professor at University of Maryland, about his book "The Black Box Society: The Secret Algorithms That Control Money and Information."

By the way did anyone catch the interview with Tim Cook on HBO's Axios yesterday? Turns out you can use and ipad to visualize what it would look like if there was a lawn chair and some bushes where you point the thing. Heavy stuff.

The cartoon of people sitting on top of the 7 train which runs through a good part of western Queens is dead on. That line, like most of the MTA is super out of control hectic especially during rush hours.

Read that WSJ editorial. Shame on Cuomo and DeBlasio. It's like they paid a handsome prince in order to marry off their ugly daughter when, in fact,she already has many suitors. I live in Sunnyside (part of LIC), btw.

Automobile manufacturer looking for additional revenue streams has an idea: selling your data. www.freep.com... ("Facebook as a model" ... They want your driving experience to be more open and connected? Ugh!)

Seriously, though. Amazon has done little more for Seattle than attract a horde with little or no investment in the city, driven up house prices ( and property taxes ) so high long-time residents are leaving for other towns, and done little to alleviate the homeless crisis.